Who's Lynne Cheney Really Protecting?

October 19, 2004|By Margaret Carlson

I have to admit I found it a little jarring when Sen. John F. Kerry used the word "lesbian." As far as we've come -- and I've come far for a product of the School of the Good Shepherd outside of Harrisburg, Pa. -- the word "lesbian" still leaps out in the middle of a presidential debate.

The word came in an answer to moderator Bob Schieffer's novel way of framing a question about gay rights: "Is homosexuality a choice?" Bush sidestepped, as he did last year when asked if homosexuality was a sin. (That time, he answered, "We're all sinners.") This time he replied, "I just don't know."

Kerry, talking honestly -- and for once, it seemed, from the heart -- said: "We're all God's children. I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was who she was born as. I think if you talk to anybody, it's not a choice." I was even more jarred when I read Lynne Cheney's reaction to Kerry's comment. "This is not a good man," she said. "Of course, I am speaking as a mom, and a pretty indignant mom. This is not a good man. What a cheap and tawdry political trick."

My first instinct was to admire Cheney as a fierce and righteous mother defending her daughter. But the more I thought about it, it just didn't hold up. Her daughter is an adult, happily in the public eye, an open lesbian whose job before she joined the 2000 campaign was as liaison to the gay community for Coors beer in Colorado. She now holds one of the most important jobs in her dad's re-election effort. And her life partner joined the Cheneys on stage in St. Louis after the second debate. She'd have to be in deep denial to think her sexual orientation wasn't going to come up, given that Republicans have made gay marriage a defining issue of the campaign.

It was dear old Dad who first made Mary Cheney a talking point in the campaign earlier this year, discussing how there is some daylight between his position on the gay marriage amendment and that of the president. And in the veep debate, he thanked John Edwards for making a kind reference to Mary.

This new openness was a departure. During the campaign in 2000, neither Cheney would discuss Mary, despite constant references by the Cheneys to their daughter Elizabeth -- the lawyer, wife and mother.

Now the vice president has gone public, showing how tolerant he is of his own daughter -- but he is still not willing to move his president or his party in that direction.

Kerry and Edwards see this and realize that discussing Mary Cheney is a no-lose proposition: It highlights the hypocrisy of the Bush-Cheney position to Democrats while simultaneously alerting evangelicals to the fact that the Cheneys have an actual gay person in their household whom they apparently aren't trying to convert or cure.

Republicans know they have to be careful how they strike back for fear of alienating their moderates. For the first time, Log Cabin Republicans are not supporting the GOP. The constitutional amendment on gay marriage was too far to go for a tax cut.

You couldn't read Lynne Cheney's outburst about a cheap and tawdry trick without thinking that she herself finds homosexuality cheap and tawdry.

Herein lies the irony of the flap. At the moment of Bush's evasion, it was entirely appropriate for Kerry to drive home the point that, as the Cheneys and millions of other American families know, homosexuality is about identity, not about a lifestyle choice. By standing up and saying so, it was John Kerry who was defending Mary Cheney.

Carlson, a contributing editor of Time magazine, wrote this for the Los Angeles Times, 202 W. First St., Los Angeles, CA 90012.